JOIN US‘Jai Bhim’ is an ode to the Constitution
Something happening more rapidly than it used to a few years ago is how words are losing meaning from overuse, squeezed until they are emptied of all depth and reduced to noise. This is an age of excess brimming with emptiness. There may not be such a thing as too many films but there is a great overload of conjecture about films.
When there is such an excess of words, how do we write about one or two particularly striking moments in a film like 'Jai Bhim', especially since it is a film of few moments?
The Tamil film, directed by T J Gnanavel and dubbed into several languages, doesn’t address its own moments. It doesn’t accord to itself the grandeur that woke people do to themselves. Based on real-life events from 1995, the story of Rasakannu (K Manikandan) and Sengeni (Lijomol Jose) from the Irular tribe follows the events that unfolded after Rasakannu was wrongly accused of theft and taken away to the police station where he pleads the truth of his innocence until life is beaten out of him.
The title of the film does say something but what do you call a film about a man whose last words before he dies by police torture is the only truth he had? Possibly a truth that could have kept him alive in a land where people lived by the Constitution, a land unfortunately that is neither this nor his.
The power of 'Jai Bhim' lies in the quiet way it ushers us into the world of the Constitution, in the slow appeal it makes to us to read the Constitution. To keep reminding ourselves, amidst all the noise, that it was written for you by a man whose life and work are directions to live with dignity.
What 'Jai Bhim' achieves is not in what it shows but in what it withholds. One such moment occurs in the beginning where advocate Chandru (played by Suriya) is in court and two of his client’s toddlers walk in, giggling and playing. It is a small moment and if we still choose to be distracted (or mildly annoyed) by Suriya’s Lord saviour entry into the courtroom, it is easily missable. If it isn’t missable, it is wrapped so delicately between two grand moments that we leave it unwillingly, overwhelmed by what follows after to return to it.
Advocate Chandru is representing the case of Kolanji, a man from a scheduled tribe wrongly accused of a crime. His family are the only other people seated in court. When the public prosecutor walks, his remark, “Who let these people in?” punctures for itself another such moment and leaves.
Before we are drawn into the violence that both Rasakannu and Sengeni are subjected to, we first get to know them through their kindness. As a snake catcher, he is often asked why he doesn’t kill the snakes after catching them. His response “God smeared venom on their fangs and they get whacked wherever they go” echoes a respect for life. His advice to a snake as he leaves it in the forest is to keep away from humans. Much earlier, as they catch rats on fields, Sengeni lets a baby rat run away because she doesn’t think it necessary to deal with hunger by killing a little thing.
Rasakannu is ‘shown his place’ enough times when he expresses fondness for people who want nothing of it. Whether it is an involuntary touch as he is getting on someone’s bike, or even his refusal to take money for a job, he gets immediately yelled at (“Next you’ll say I am your relative! Since when is your place part of the village?”), his kindness is never returned or even acknowledged.
The dignity that the couple show to snakes and rats is the most basic dignity that is incumbent on a right to life, something that Rasakannu and others like him don’t get from people. The film, therefore, is a tribute to the Constitution that upholds this right.
Watching 'Jai Bhim' takes an effort to not be dissuaded by the noise it seems to have garnered. I would watch it again for Sengeni who walks out of the police station defiantly even as the police plead after her to get inside the van so they can drop her back with respect. This is a duty the police are taught over a phone call, gently reminding them of the Constitution.
(The author teaches English and Journalism at St Joseph's College (Autonomous), Bengaluru).